Tomb Raider 1: The Novel
by Tjw Croft
Summary: Follow Lara as she dives into her first adventure. From the Caves of Peru to the Cysterns of Grece, and from the Obelisks of Egypt to the Hatcheries of Atlantis. Enjoy it all in full 'HD' detail.
1. Prologue

_Los Alamos, New Mexico, 1945:_

The snake didn't much like the heat, and he couldn't be blamed. It was over a hundred degrees. Just to cool off a little, he slithered under a rock nearby, not knowing that doing so would save his life.

Only moments later, one of the nuclear tests began.

A globe of sheer energy and sound radiated from the origin. A few seconds and the sound blasted the snake's ears.

But something else wasn't right.

A black cylinder sprang out of the ground, and landed not meters from our poor snake.

It carved a crater in the ground, leaving the rock that our snake had chosen to hide under totter before sliding into the crater.

The rock hit the top of the cylinder.

The cylinder slid apart, opened, and revealed the prison of the most horrible terror unleashed on this earth once more.

Natla was reborn.

1


	2. Chapter 1

_Calcutta, India, 1996:_

Of all the things that Larson's boss had asked him, he was enjoying this part.

His "enemy", Lara Croft, the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen apart from his own boss, was to receive a message, through him.

And she wouldn't be able to refuse this offer of work.

He walked towards the coffee table in the middle of the great hall of the Indian hotel, which was by far the most elegant building for miles around.

Miss Croft was sitting with her feet on the table, reading an old journal, presumably her father's. She only glanced up as Larson came within 3 feet of the table.

"Now what's a Man got to do for that kind of attention?" queried the ex-marine. He raised his eyebrows, puffing out his chest in hope to impress her.

"If that's the attention you're looking for, Larson, you're well on your way. You'd be better off going to the next corner with a bundle of dollars." She never took her eyes off the pages of her journal.

"Look, I'm not here for me, so don't get your hopes up." he sneered at her.

She scoffed as she looked him up and down. Sure, he was a strong man, with a good long record in the marines. And military prison hadn't hurt him either. It was said he could wrestle a bear down with his bare hands, and give amazing massages the next minute. For the adventuress he'd have been perfect, if only he didn't contradict every rule in Lara's book. He was smart, cunning, and dangerous, but he desecrated the tombs Lara tried to preserve. He forced his way around rather than look for the right way in, and it was rumored that he stole other people's discoveries.

"If you're not here for me, then what the hell are you in this country for?" she laced every word she spoke with heavy sarcasm.

"I'm here to pass along a message. From Miss Jacqueline Natla" he spoke his own words tiredly.

"Natla? Sounds familiar." said Lara, setting down her journal.Now she was intrigued_. Why is a multi-millionaire interested in me? Why did she send Larson, and why did that name sound _so_ damn familiar?_

Larson pulled a laptop with a webcam in it. This seemed specifically designed for videoconferences. There was an image on the screen. The image of Natla, sitting at her desk in the tall building of her headquarters in Chicago. A blue 'loading' icon rotated as the communication buffer started up.

After a minute, the icon disappeared. "Miss Croft, Meet Jacqueline Natla, of Natla technologies" Larson made the introduction.

"_Ah, Miss Croft… My research department has recently turned its focus to the study of ancient artifacts, and I'm lead to believe, that with the right incentive, you're just the person to find them for me_." Natla stood up as she finished her 'introduction'.

"I'm afraid you've been mislead. I only play for_ sport." _Lara felt the disappointment of another person interested in buying her services.

"_That's precisely what leads me to you, Miss Croft. This is a game you've played before; with your father_." Natla clicked a button on her desk that changed the screen. There was an orange background, with a list of ancient symbols scrolling upwards. Lara's eye's widened when the artifact she was being asked to find appeared onscreen.

"_You both spent years searching for the Scion of Atlantis." _Natla continued. Lara raised an eyebrow. _"All you needed was the location of Qualopec's tomb."_

Lara's eyes shot completely open.

"_You found Vilcabamba?"_ the surprise in Lara's voice was distinguished. She was shocked, amazed, and dumbfounded all at the same time. Not how a young lady should behave.

"_How quickly can you get to Peru?" _Natla asked quizzically.

Lara's lips formed her unique smile.

"By tomorrow. Can you have a guide for me?" asked Lara in return.

"_Of course. Mr. Larson there will provide you with your ticket and other info. Have a safe trip. And good luck. Good day_." With that Natla terminated the communication.

Lara just sat there staring at the screen, disbelieving the perfectness of this situation.

"My my… Someone's been given a lot of work!" Larson jested.

"Oh shut it, Larson." snapped Lara "I've had it with you already. Give me the papers and get out of my sight."

Grinning immensely, Larson obliged and left the hotel.

_That was easy_, he thought.

Back in the hall, Lara stood up, and headed towards her room. As she did so, she pulled out her cell phone and called her private line to _Croft Manor. _

"Winston? I need you to set up a room in Chicago for me." she spoke quietly into the phone.

"_Of course, ma'am"_ came the reply.

"And I'll need my break-in bag there too." She smiled as she heard Winston audibly sigh from England.

"_It shall be there when you need it."_ The old man said grudgingly. He had never condoned any of Lara's more criminal trends.

"Thank you, Winston. I will call you when I get to Chicago." she hung up on the old man.

Little was she aware of the great gears that had been just set in motion.

2


	3. Chapter 2

_Andes mountain range, Peru:_

There were really only a few things that visibly unsettled Lara Croft.

Rickety airplanes 3000 feet over the Andes were one of them. She gulped as the pilot decided to suddenly forget to hold onto the joystick. The plane took a mere second of freefall. In that second Lara's heart plunged to the deepest valley of these God forsaken mountains.

"I beg of you _not_ to do that again if you value your job." snapped Lara at the pilot. He turned around, grinned at her, and spoke in Spanish.

"Lo siento, señora. No soy piloto. Soy guía." In English, he had said _I'm not a pilot, I'm a guide._

Lara decided to just sit back down, and stared at the magazine in front of her. It was 'Natla Technologies Magazine'. Lara flipped through the pages.

There were articles on all types of technology that the company had designed, and also various projects in the works.

Thankfully within minutes the guide landed the plane safely up on the snow covered Andes.

_Thank God!_ Sighed Lara.

The guide got out first, and put down a set of stairs from the plane. Lara stepped down. Her boots sank 5 inches in the snow before she could stand on anything.

Slowly, they made their way up the mountains, and reached a plateau. There was a bridge that had long ago given out, and therefore was useless, but they were already on the right side of the valley Natla had indicated.

Lara stopped as her guide walked up to explore.

"Senora!" he yelled.

"What? What now?" Lara had a tone of impatience as she removed her father's journal from her backpack. That backpack brought back memories from long ago. The Isis eye mission was when her mentor, Werner Von Croy had been trapped in the temple, and she had run out on him. The memory brought back years of pain.

"He encontrado una escalera!" yelled her guide. His yell snapped her back to the present.

"A ladder?" not the most common thing to find, but she couldn't complain if things were easy. It was getting cold out here.

Her guide put the ladder up against the next ledge, and started to climb. Meanwhile, Lara started to read a passage from her father's journal:  
_Vilcabamba continues to elude us, and my insistence that we press on in spite of these failures, has morale low. I suspect Jenkins to be the author of this situation. He simply refuses to accept the possibility that Atlantis is the foundation upon which all known civilizations were built. Increasingly, I find it is Lara who remains untainted by academic turmoil; And open-minded enough to see this truth!_

She closed the booklet, and locked it, then turned around to see her guide nearing the top of the ladder. Suddenly, the ladder creaked, and the rung that he had stepped on broke away.

For a moment he thought it was the end. He thought that he was going to die.

Lara's heart was thinking the same thing, as she gasped.

Manuel, as was her guide's name, suddenly found a burst of energy, that he later claimed to be a gift from god, and grasped the ledge. He pulled himself up, and looked back down at the strange woman he'd brought this far.

"Lo siento! No traje bastante cuerda!" he yelled back at her. _Not enough rope!_

Lara looked up at her guide, relieved he was alive.

"Not to worry!" she yelled back, "I'll find another way up."

_Great! _She thought sarcastically.

She looked around. Apparently the Incans hadn't thought of this happening.

But her creative mind saw another way up almost immediately. In front of her was a long crevice in the rock face. She ran towards it and jumped up to grab onto it. She then shimmied across, turning when she came into a corner, then around another corner. She looked above her, but the ledge was too high for her to just jump straight up to. As she looked behind her, she saw an elevated section, where a part of this little indent in the cliff had fallen. She back flipped and quickly grabbed onto the ledge, pulling herself up. There was another large rock here that allowed her to get to a ledge just slightly below the remnants of the bridge. She felt to make sure her grapple was still there, and pulled it in her hand. _Time to test this baby._ She thought.

She swung the grapple out at a ring left from the bridge, used for the long ropes that used to hold the bridge together. It hooked into the ring, and when she pulled, it didn't come loose. She looked ahead and focused. She ran towards the edge of this platform. She leaped, cable from the grapple in hand, and flew across the gap. She swung twice, and then let go as she moved towards the upper ledge. She hit the edge hard, and nearly let go, but grabbed on with both hands quickly.

She pulled up onto the ledge, and retracted the grapple.

She took a deep calming breath and stood up. She saw the guide standing near the large doors that she would soon enter, but first, she had to do something she'd promised her father.

She turned around, and saw the entire southern Andes stretch out before her. The sight was amazing. "We made it, Father." she whispered to herself. "We made it to Vilcabamba."

Peak after snowy peak poked up at the bottom of her sight, while the green forests further down extended for hundreds of kilometers. For years afterwards, she would dream of this sight, remembering it as beautifully as always.

Eventually she turned back towards the doors in the base of the cliff face. Her trusty guide still standing there.

"Hemos llegado." he said in a muted voice.

_Of course we got here! Where else would we be? _This man was really getting on her nerves.

The next thing he said though was quite helpful.

"Quizás alguno de esos símbolos allí arriba abrirá la puerta?" _Perhaps one of those symbols up there could help us open the door. _ He gestured towards a set of four symbols carved into the cliff above the door.

"Maybe…" replied Lara. She was already searching for a way up. She quickly found it. To the left of the doors, was a set of ledges and stones. She was starting to feel the excitement building up in her. The anticipation of decades of searching. She hastily climbed up the ledges, and looked around. There was another high ring. She leapt, throwing the hook as she went, and soared all the way to the high ledges on the other side of the doors.

She tumbled as she landed, and turned around. It was a long jump, from her present ledge to that of the symbols, but she was sure she could make it. She ran towards the edge of the precipice, and jumped. Once again she was banged into the rock face, and nearly let go, but once again she pulled herself up. The four symbols were there, staring out at her. They were the symbols of an eagle, representing the afterlife, an eye, signifying that this temple belonged to an _all-seeing_; a god, a horse, symbol of a path or journey, and a pheasant, the symbol of Qualopec himself.

_If this isn't it then I must be dreaming,_ she thought as she examined the symbols. Her best guess as to the one that opened the door was the horse head, meaning a path.

She felt it, and pushed on the eye. That being the way to open the doors below her.

She turned around, and looked down as the doors swung open. They were a foot thick, and yet they swung so easily. Her guide slowly stepped away as the doors opened. He peered into the deep, penetrating darkness, and was amazed. The Elders in his town would always talk about how the Lost City of Vilcabamba was the tomb for the great God-King Qualopec, and how someday Qualopec would rise once more to save the Earth from evil. Rumor had it that his guardians still walked the slopes of these mountains, killing anyone who strayed into their path. The Elders described these guardians as tall, seven-foot creatures, skinless, baring their musculature, and sometimes wrapped in the bandages of mummies.

As the doors stopped their moving, he looked even harder into the darkness. But something wasn't right. There was a gleam in the darkness. A set of gleaming yellow circles. Then another, and another, and finally a fourth. His mind quickly recognized what he was looking at: A hungry pack of wolves. And the pack was heading straight for him. He began to run from them, dropping his pack as he ran, but the wolves were catching up rapidly.

Lara was watching this scene from the ledge, and decided she had to do something. She pulled out her dual pistols, and ran to the edge of the ledge. She aimed down and shot at the leading wolf. It moved out of the way before the bullet hit. Coincidentally that same wolf was the one that reached the guide, and bit at the poor man's legs.

Manuel felt himself fall towards the snowy ground. He couldn't understand why he was falling though, until his mind registered the pain of the missing section of muscle, tendon and ligature. The lead wolf had literally bit a section of Manuel's leg out, and was swallowing it before he headed in for more. The wolf snarled before it went in for the kill. Poor Manuel screamed as he saw as the wolf ran towards him, and opened its jaw, preparing to snap Manuel's neck. It all happened so quickly, but painlessly. Manuel felt his body release all of his muscles as he slowly slipped from consciousness. His pulse slowed, and in a matter of seconds, Manuel Garcia died. He felt a strange sense of peace as he died, because he saw that he'd at least been privileged enough to see the entrance to Vilcabamba, and that he'd gotten the strange lady to her destination. The last thing he ever saw was that same strange lady leap off the ledge she'd been on, and dive, shooting her pistols at the wolves.

Lara fell gracefully, flipping in mid-fall. She kept her guns out and kept shooting. One wolf was already down, and there were three to go. She emptied the clips as she landed on her feet. She quickly replaced them, and kept shooting. She ran at two of the wolves, and jumped over them, flipping, and shooting into the back of their skulls. As she landed, the alpha wolf turned towards her. They glared at each other, and circled. Quickly the wolf lunged at Lara, tackling her, and she fought to keep the wolf's snapping jaw from her own neck with one arm, while trying to get her other pistol against the wolf's gut. She struggled for a few seconds. Finally, as she felt the wolf carrying arm start to tire, she pulled the trigger, and killed the blasted wolf. The wolf yelped, and then died. Lara slumped the wolf off to one side, and stood up. She walked over towards the guide and crouched next to him. His eyes were still open. She placed her hand over the lids, closed the lids, and sighed. Her life was constantly marred by tragedy and death: The crash that lead to her mother's death, the twisted race that lead to her mentor's disappearance, and ultimately the Cambodian expedition that caused her father's supposed death.

She stood up, and turned towards the opening. The stone carvings around the inside of the doorway were mostly eroded from the water draining that seeped through the top of the door, but their meaning was clear.

_Stay out. This tomb is a sacred place._

She couldn't stop now. She'd come this far, and couldn't waste years of searching on a small incident. She walked towards the entrance, and pulled out her guns, just in case. Once she determined that there were no more wolves in this area, she holstered her weapons. She stepped on a square in the ground that caused the doors behind her to close. She glanced backwards at the closing darkness, and shrugged. She took off her glasses and looked forward. There was a long path ahead.

2


End file.
